This paper will concentrate on presenting a legal analysis of two of the main challenges to open source software: SCO's litigation and software patents. The paper discusses the validity of such challenges, their possible impact to the future of open source software, and the possible legal...

Open source software is increasingly used in mission-critical processes of organizations, signaling its acceptance as highly reliable software. That said, the development process in open source communities differs radically from conventional approaches to reliable software development. Stronger...

Open-source software is not for hobbyists any more. Instead, it is a business strategy with broad applicability. Businesses can be built around this idea. In this paper, I want the reader to grapple with the specifics of how to build and grow such a business. To this end, I have proposed three...

This paper examines the role played by "continuations" (procedural revisions of patent applications) within software patenting and the implications that the use by patentees of continuations has for free and open-source software design. Our research analyzes data on continuations in software...

Open source software, developed by volunteers, appears counter to the conventional wisdom that private provision of public goods is socially more efficient. But complexity makes a difference. Under standard models, development contracts for specialized software may be difficult to write and...

Some free or open source software infects other software with its licensing terms. Popularly, this is called a viral license, but the software is not a computer virus. Free or open source software is a copyright based licensing system. It typically allows modification and distribution on...

This Article analyzes legal protection for open-source software by comparing it to the venerable civil law tradition of moral rights. The comparison focuses on the moral right of integrity, with which one may object to mutilations of her work, even after having parted with the copyright and the...

Fledgling efforts exist to establish open-source projects in biotechnology. Following copyleft, participants agree that advances in the technology must remain as openly available as the original technology. Such agreements implicate patent misuse, which is defined as an impermissible attempt to...

Open source software projects rely on the voluntary efforts of thousands of software developers, yet we know little about why developers choose to participate in this collective development process. This paper inductively derives a framework for understanding participation from the perspective...

This paper examines the incentives of programmers to contribute to open source software projects on a voluntary basis. In particular, the paper looks at how this incentive changes as (i) performance becomes more visible to the relevant audience, (ii) effort has a stronger impact on performance,...